Reports suggest popular media such as DVD's, CD's and even next generation formats such as Blu-ray and HD DVD may soon have RFID chips embedded into them in order to halt illegal copying of music and movies. Unfortunately the mechanism may even make its way into drives and players which will render personal backups useless.
The technology will also find its way into drives and players. When a user places a disc inside a player, the RFID reader will verify whether or not a disc has been copied or whether or not a movie is being played in the correct geographical location. Unfortunately, this also means that users will be unable to make home backups of discs and store away originals for safe keeping.
Ritek's chief executive officer Gordon Yeh said "this technology holds the potential to protect the intellectual property of music companies, film studios and gaming and software developers worldwide." Apparently, a new RFID equipped DVD drive will perform the security check by hardware, and not require system drivers or specialized software. The intent is to prevent users from creating software to circumvent the RFID mechanism. The online enthusiast community however, has been successfully modifying driver firmware for a number of years.
Source: DailytechRitek's chief executive officer Gordon Yeh said "this technology holds the potential to protect the intellectual property of music companies, film studios and gaming and software developers worldwide." Apparently, a new RFID equipped DVD drive will perform the security check by hardware, and not require system drivers or specialized software. The intent is to prevent users from creating software to circumvent the RFID mechanism. The online enthusiast community however, has been successfully modifying driver firmware for a number of years.